Thursday, July 30, 2015

Economic Crisis, Uncertainty about the Future Pushing Russian Birthrate Down

Paul Goble

Staunton, July 30 – The Russian statistics agency
reported yesterday that the birthrate in the Russian Federation had fallen to
12.6 children per 1000 population, lower than it has been at any point in the
last three years and, according to experts, a reflection of both underlying
demographic trends and current uncertainties about the future among Russians.

“Izvestiya” spoke with two
experts about this development.Mikhail
Denisenko, deputy director of the Institute of Demography at Moscow’s Higher
School of Economics, said that the decline in the number of births was
occurring “because of the sharp reduction in the number of potential mothers” (izvestia.ru/news/589299).

Fewer people were born in
the 1990s than during perestroika, and consequently, the number of women
entering prime child-bearing years is down.But he “does not exclude” the possibility that the explanation for this
year’s decline over last reflects the impact of the economic crisis in Russia.

Leontiy Byzov, a scholar at
the Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Complex Social Research, agreed and said,
in the words of Kasparov.ru’s report that “general uncertainty about tomorrow
is influencing demographic processes.”If that is the case, such feelings will further depress Russian
population growth and increase Moscow’s dependence on immigrant workers.